BLUE CLAY

[hmmm]

HI ALL
can any one enlighten me on blue clay, i have found a small gully, when i pann the blue clay i get lots of black sand.

 

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[TURNMASTER]

Yeah huh,
Hope you had a Good Christmas as well
Jeff

 

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[TURNMASTER]

hmmm,
Got a question for ya. If ya don't mind.
What method did you decide on to get your silver out of your clay?
Are you refining your own metals or having it done?


Ok that was 2 questions
Jeff

 

[hmmm]

hmmm,
Got a question for ya. If ya don't mind.
What method did you decide on to get your silver out of your clay?
Are you refining your own metals or having it done?


Ok that was 2 questions
Jeff

I have no idea, right now we are trying to get to bedrock, we have gold flakes and hope to get nuggets. we are going to use a old method for now, we plan to make a puddling box right in the clay. then screen and pan the concentrates. the silver is hard to catch, any ideas would help.

 

[TURNMASTER]

I have a half thought out idea. Let me think it a little further thru (for the blue clay).

I guess I thought you had pulled a bunch out already. From what I thought I had read in a different post.

Jeff

 

[shaun7]

I have a half thought out idea. Let me think it a little further thru (for the blue clay).

I guess I thought you had pulled a bunch out already. From what I thought I had read in a different post.

Jeff

Only enough to make 500,000 silver coins.....not worth mentioning really.

 

[hmmm]

I have a half thought out idea. Let me think it a little further thru (for the blue clay).

I guess I thought you had pulled a bunch out already. From what I thought I had read in a different post.

Jeff

FROM THE EVIDANCE DOWN STREAM, SOME ONE HAS MINED THE CREEK. As for us , all we have done so far is dig out the the edge of the crap the loggers stuffed in the old placer mine. now we are going to start minning.
the picture is from about 200 feet down stream, you can see the hard pann walls are vertical, this looks worked to me.
my comment about the 500,000 silver coins is just saying , a lot of silver was taken, yet there is no history linked to it.

 

[TURNMASTER]

Do you suppose; the clay could be churned in a tub of water to a point which it would release its cargo of silver and black sand. While an inflow of water would wash away the clay saturated water (mud) leaving the desireable minerales in the bottom of the tub.

If the clay could be disolved enough then a system could be developed.

Jeff

 

[hmmm]

Do you suppose; the clay could be churned in a tub of water to a point which it would release its cargo of silver and black sand. While an inflow of water would wash away the clay saturated water (mud) leaving the desireable minerales in the bottom of the tub.

If the clay could be disolved enough then a system could be developed.

Jeff

Thats what we are going to do , its called " A PUDDLING BOX".
we are going to make it right in the clay wall.
you just make a hole, use about 6 to 10 inches of water, you use a rake to break and dezolve the clay, we are going to screen it then process it, the larger material we will go over with the metal detector. should be fun. i only hope they left us some.

 

[TURNMASTER]

Yeah no kidding,
I was thinking of something like a horse trough. Near the bottom you would have an inlet pipe with a appropriatelly sized nozzle aray. I would make that out of PVC with holes (small) drilled at intervals. Then have the outlet at the top, or just let the water spill over.

I was thinking you could just shovel and let the H2O do the work (or most of it). I figured a guy would have to stir the mix to aggitate it and free the silver.

End of the day you clean out the bottom, then recover silver from sand.

Simple, just let water and gravity do the work for ya. Nothing is ever quite that easy as it is made to sound in a general discustion.

Please keep in mind that I have not panned since I was a teen.

Jeff

 

[Oroblanco]

Seasons greetings amigos,

There seems to be some confusion here - when silver occurs in a blue clay, it is not raw native silver but silver in a complex chemical compound (mineral) form, which has to be further processed to extract the silver than just a gravity/mechanical separation as has been described such as a puddling box.

Using the puddling box would likely help to concentrate the silver compound, so it is a useful step in reducing the amount of ore you must then process. There are several methods of extracting the silver from these concentrates, from chemical <eg cyanide leach, mercury amalgamation, etc> to simple fire smelting. You would need to try different methods to see which is most efficient and most cost-effective before committing to setting up your "mill" (which you could set up in your garage or barn) to process your ore. Here is a free online book which explains how it is done.
http://books.google.com/books?id=c4...methods of silver extraction from ore&f=false

Depending on how much ore you intend to handle, will make a difference in which method you end up choosing. One of the oldest is simple smelting, using a charcoal-fired furnace with blowers. You can build a small charcoal furnace very inexpensively, here is an article on how to build a home charcoal foundry
http://www.seattlerobotics.org/Encoder/200008/GEAR_article.html
Obviously if you burn $5 worth of charcoal to extract $2 worth of silver, this method is not going to work, so you need to try different methods.

Good luck and good hunting amigos, wishing you all a very happy new year.
Oroblanco

 

[hmmm]

Oroblanco
The silver appears to be raw native silver , but i am sure you are right about a percentage being in a complex chemical compound (mineral) form. we plan to screen it then drain the clay and let it settle. the silver is secondary, we have hit the gold flakes and hope it gets better as we get closer to bed rock.

you can see in the pictures how big the silver is, little nuggets.

 

[Oroblanco]

HOLA amigo and Happy New Year!
If it is raw, natural silver, I would strongly suggest using a copper gold pan, coat the bottom with mercury, add salt to your water and amalgamate the silver. You would want to get a retort to cook off the mercury and recover it. I congratulate you again,
Oroblanco

 

[hmmm]

CRAP, i broke my camera. we have not processed the silver yet, still diggin out the old mine. we did notice we get about 200 lbs of medical / cosmetic blue clay per tonne. very cool.
read a local legend about a lost vally where the indians used to bath in clay, they say it healed the body.

 

[Oroblanco]

HOLA amigo - I forgot to tell you, if you get larger silver nuggets that you should keep them and NOT melt them down or amalgamate etc for silver nuggets are actually rarer than gold nuggets and will bring a premium price even on Ebay.

 

[hmmm]

SO far the silver nuggets are just about 2mm and smaller, its realy cool to see the fine silver on the bottom of the pann, with that said, how do i do the borax method of recovering the silver,
i assume the 1 to 2mm size silver nuggets are to small and should be smelted.

 

[Oroblanco]

Hola amigo,

Gosh if it were mine, I would keep some of the 2 mm size as they can be soldered onto jewelry for a 'nugget' design, as they do with gold nuggets to make nugget watch bands, rings etc. The 1mm size is really too small for this IMHO. Here is an explanation of how to do your own smelting, the example given is gold but will work for silver
http://www.nuggethunters.org/Poormans-Smelting.html

I hope this helps.
Oroblanco

 

[mikepanner]

I'll say this again, if you will permit me. (copied from my post on another thread)

Re: gold 1.15 grams per ton, platinum 1.28 gpt, palladium 1.80 gpt
Reply To This Topic #13 Posted Dec 18, 2009, 08:15:45 PM

Platinum is still more valuable than gold. By the way, isn't the blue from silver in the clay and the small silver bits with the black sand may be platinum bits and/or palladium not silver?? Man, I'm drooling, now!

 

[hmmm]

I'll say this again, if you will permit me. (copied from my post on another thread)

Re: gold 1.15 grams per ton, platinum 1.28 gpt, palladium 1.80 gpt
Reply To This Topic #13 Posted Dec 18, 2009, 08:15:45 PM

Platinum is still more valuable than gold. By the way, isn't the blue from silver in the clay and the small silver bits with the black sand may be platinum bits and/or palladium not silver?? Man, I'm drooling, now!

KEEP DRULING, the silver comes from a diferent mound of blue clay, it is about 2 miles from the platinum blue ground and has 640 grams of silver per tonne and 2.5 gpt of gold, never tested for platinum.. if i had more men i would put a crew diggin the platinum blue. this deposit is in a gully about 2 km long, massive deposuit.

 

[hmmm]

It gets way better, you all are welcome to come for a visit.

 

[alpha105]

This a finders keepers visit? =)